How This Trip Came To Be...

On July 3, 2007 I opened our regular "Flash Alert" email newsletter from Joel Rosenberg to find an invitation to The Joshua Fund's upcoming trip to Israel. Now, don't think this was a special invitation just to us! Joel's newsletters go out to thousands of people. On a whim, I forwarded the invitation to Jimmy at work and added the comment, "Wouldn't this be fun if we had enough money?" or something like that. He emailed me back almost instantly saying, "You need to get your passport updated now. We need to find babysitters. We need to save money. We need to go. Lets plan on it. I have been wanting to do this. This is a great opportunity." Needless to say, this response shocked me!

I clicked on the link in the newsletter to get more information for the trip. Although Jimmy's response surprised me, it was at this point that I started to realize this trip was a God-thing. One would think that I would get the application rather quickly as it was all done via email. One day, maybe two, tops. When I hadn't heard back in a week, I sent another email requesting an application. Again, I thought I would hear a response within a day or two. After three more days, I prayed and I remember telling God, "OK, this is all in Your hands. If You want us to go then it will happen. If this isn't part of Your plan for us right now, then I'm OK with that as well." Within an hour of praying and submitting the whole issue to God's control, we received our email with the application.

I went about filling out the application and sending it in along with our deposit. The trip was only open to a certain number of people and we had already lost several days in the application process. We waited two more weeks to find out if we had made it in time or if the trip was already full. I finally sent an email requesting information and they responded, "Yes, we received them and at the moment you are both on a Wait List with a very good possibility of going in soon." I have to admit, I had already seen God work on this trip and rather than be discouraged, Jimmy and I just waited to see how it would all play out. We sensed in our spirits and had now seen evidence that God wants us on this trip. We just needed to trust Him to make it happen.

We waited through the rest of July and all of August. At the beginning of September we went on a family trip to Disney World. While there I remember thinking that if we didn't make it on to the list by the end of the week after we returned home then I would cancel our deposit and get our money back. By the end of that week, our deposit check cleared the bank. I emailed the travel agency to see if that meant we had made it on to the list and sure enough we had. We were good to go! Again, though, it was another step that didn't come together until I could see the hand of God working to make it happen.